Relocating Commotion-Causing Beavers

Many Utahns have experience with beavers. Unfortunately, much of that experience is less than desirable: beavers plugging up culverts, chewing down trees and flooding parking lots. The reality is that beavers can be a problem when they're stuck in the wrong places. The flipside is that beavers are very beneficial when they're in the right places.

There are several options available when beavers are causing conflicts.

• One: they can be legally trapped during Utah's beaver season or by a permitted nuisance trapper.
• Two: they can be left in place, using engineering alternatives that can alleviate some issues such as flooding.
• Three: they can be moved to a more welcoming locale.

Moving beavers is not as simple as it may sound. Despite the DWR's safeguards, animals can die during trapping, holding or transport. Transplanted beavers can make desperate attempts to return home or find a mate, invariably dying in the process. Beavers can be caught unaware by predators at their unfamiliar release site.

In the southern part of the state, the DWR is trying to help beavers get from areas where they're not wanted to areas where they are needed. But that's not all. Heather Talley, DWR Wildlife Recreation Programs Specialist and the region's head beaver wrangler, is trying to determine how successful those relocated beavers are.

DWR wildlife technicians trap beavers that are causing problems in local communities using Hancock or Koro traps: large, clamshell-shaped live traps that are strong enough to hold an angry beaver. The trappers keep working until there are no beavers left in the area. The goal is to capture the entire colony (an extended family unit) and then release them at the same site because research has shown doing so helps the beavers survive and prosper.

The beavers are then transported to the DWR's holding facility, where they undergo a period of decontamination — just like waders and boats, beavers can carry aquatic hitchhikers like whirling disease or exotic mussels. Yes, we wash and dry the beavers.

After their time in decon is over, wildlife veterinarian Annette Roug and DWR biologists like myself and Heather use a special drug combination to sedate the beavers for handling. They are allowed to fall asleep, then transferred to a table (carrying a totally relaxed beaver is a bit like holding a 30-pound sack of marbles) with several people hovering in wait. For a few minutes, the beaver disappears under the silhouettes of a half-dozen DWR staff, each of whom is working to get the animal processed quickly.

One person supplies the unconscious beaver with oxygen via a mask placed over its face. Another monitors the animal's vital signs such as heart rate and respiration, struggling to hear the quiet beat of a beaver's little heart over wind and cars and sometimes even aircraft. Body measurements are taken. The gums and paws are sampled for fungus, the fur is examined for ectoparasites (yes, we comb the beavers), and any pre-existing injuries are treated.

Then comes the messy process of determining the gender, which I'll simply say involves expressing anal glands and examining the secretions. A radio-transmitter is applied so that Heather's team can track the beaver. Medication to kill parasites and provide pain relief is given. Finally, the beaver is weighed and promptly returned to the holding pen, where they are given a 'reversal' drug: this counteracts the sedative effect of the initial injection and allows the beaver to slowly wake up.

After they have been processed, DWR staff and volunteers transport the beavers to their new homes. If things go well, once they adjust to their new surroundings, beavers get to work.

It turns out, without houses and businesses and schools in the mix, the things beavers do are powerfully transformative — and potentially healing — to the environments in which they live. Their activities result in what we like to call 'heterogeneous aquatic habitat.' That means they create places where the water is shallow, as well as places where it is deep, and everything in between. That makes for a wide range of water temperatures. Felled trees in the water create places to live and hide. The dam traps sediments and cleans water. In the multichannel, braided waterways, some water moves faster and some moves slower. The substrate becomes more variable. All of this results in a greater diversity of fish and aquatic invertebrate species, in addition to helping struggling amphibian species like the boreal toad.

More fish and clean water is just the start. Beaver activity restores environmental resiliency by storing water, which is directly beneficial to both the land and the people who live there. Flooding areas behind the dam recharges groundwater and raises the water table. This aids plants like willow, aspen and cottonwood, creates wet meadows that benefit species like sage-grouse, and even helps keep crops green. The wetter landscape functions as a firebreak during wildfires. By changing the hydrology of the stream, beavers decrease erosion of streambanks and widen deeply incised creeks. Their dams and the newly-modified stream extend the seasonal release of water and mitigate downstream flooding. Beavers also change the streamside vegetation, increasing the diversity of bird species and small mammals in addition to creating habitat preferred by moose.

Heather and her crew have translocated 136 animals since the program started. These beavers, with an unspoken promise of industriousness, have been escorted to post-fire sites in need of rehab, wetlands with toad declines and incised creeks. Transmitters have been placed on 57 animals so far. Heather's crew is conducting ongoing surveys to see how the transplanted beavers are doing.

As the benefits of beavers are being recognized around the arid west, people are increasingly referring to the furry little marvels as 'ecosystem engineers' and 'keystone species.' State wildlife agencies, ranchers, water managers and even businesses like the Logan, Utah, WalMart are realizing that, far from being an intractable nuisance, beavers can be a low-cost alternative to heavy equipment or expensive wetland and stream recovery projects. Indeed, beavers help not only streams, but the people who depend on them. If you like water, thank a beaver.

The Paths of Pelicans

In 2014, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) began efforts to place transmitters on American white pelicans. This was the culmination of ongoing cooperative efforts between numerous partners, including U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, the Utah Department of Natural Resource’s Endangered Species Mitigation Fund, the Salt Lake International Airport and the Tracy Aviary Conservation Science Fund.

Cutting-edge satellite transmitters were procured for the pelicans. Every ounce is vitally important when placing transmitters on birds. The solution is solar power, obviating the need for heavy batteries and allowing the transmitter to draw power from the time birds spend in the sun. To prevent interference with flying or grooming, the solar-powered transmitters sit on birds’ backs — in the case of pelicans, between their shoulders like a backpack. Properly fitting the transmitter to the pelican is also crucial, so Utah biologists were trained to attach the backpacks by experts from Mississippi Wildlife Services and The Nature Conservancy.

Image courtesy Sam Hall/Utah DWR

Pelican migration routes.

Transmitters in hand, the next step was to catch the pelicans. The DWR has a history of banding younger birds. Adults, however, required a bit of a learning curve. After discovering the best method to catching the wily adult pelicans, DWR biologists set about distributing transmitters at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Ogden Bay Waterfowl Management Area, Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area and Strawberry Reservoir.

Catching birds and outfitting them with fancy new backpacks is only the first part of the story. The DWR wanted to see where the pelicans were going. In the past, this meant waiting for people to see the birds and report it. Using this method, Utah white pelican sightings have been reported from 10 states including some as far away as Iowa. Scientists used pushpins on topographic maps and spreadsheets to track these sightings.

Advanced equipment like that deployed on the pelicans, in contrast, communicates with satellites which in turn send their data to a website. The webpage then automatically translates those locations to a dynamic, colorful map.

The Pelitrack site offers unprecedented access to the lives of these majestic birds. The website and all its data is available not just to the people studying the birds but to anyone at any time. Users can see where birds currently reside or they can use a query tool to see where the pelicans have been in the past. They can look at locations from multiple years or the last week.

The Pelitrack site has shown us fascinating things about these birds. Collectively, we see that most of the pelicans head south in fall, seeking the warmer climes of Mexico. A pelican christened Loretta is a classic example of this path: she follows I-15 southward, then flies to southern California before heading down the western Mexican coast. The bulk of the birds pass through Arizona and southern California like this but a few, like Gregory, ‘wobble’ in their southward journey, passing through New Mexico. These wobblers largely parallel their compatriots for they too end up on Mexico’s west coast.

Individuals, however, reveal surprising variation in the Utah birds. Five backpacked pelicans (Bartholomew, Kirk, Hook, Lupita and Quentin) have proven outliers in terms of seasonal migration. In previous years, they left Utah on a strong eastward track, Bartholomew stopping in South Dakota before nearing the others’ paths through Kansas and Texas. Their tracks diverged again in Mexico: the other pelicans crossed the nation to winter on the west coast while Bartholomew spent his winter on the Gulf coast — the only backpacked bird to do so.

Chester was another iconoclast, holding the distinction of being the first bird to demonstrate that, despite previous thinking about state populations, the American white pelicans of Utah are part of a much more widespread, regional population. Summer locations from pelicans like Chester show a previously unknown degree of connectivity between the Great Salt Lake wetlands, the nesting colony at Gunnison Island, Utah Lake, Strawberry Reservoir, other bodies of water in Utah, the nesting colonies along the Snake River in Southern Idaho, as well as nesting colonies in Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, California and Oregon. Wing tag reports had exposed pelican movements between these locations in the past but they were assumed to be once-in-a-lifetime trips. The satellite data, however, revealed that it’s far more common for a pelican to travel among these sites than previously believed: some birds made multiple trips in a week!

During Chester’s wanderings, his backpack dutifully recorded points as he literally broke barriers, flying back and forth over California’s Sierra Range – long thought to have been a formidable obstacle for pelicans. Following Chester’s pioneering performance, Uma and Everett were seen to likewise traverse the mountain range.

Age and experience may contribute to some of the variation we see. Many pelicans follow each other with amazing fidelity but other birds like Gerald and Penelope made their own trails. It’s risky for a water-dependent bird to fly over unknown territory, but perhaps the cumulative experiences of these birds led them to safe routes. For instance, Barnabus followed his fellows through the Salton Sea in Southern California in 2015, but the next year he took a new path through New Mexico.

Photo courtesy Utah DWR

Pelicans in Utah.

The details of the Pelitrack maps show unequivocally that the paths of pelicans predict water. On their seasonal journeys north and south, and during other wanderings, pelicans fly from water body to water body where they rest and refuel by cooperatively foraging for fish. Zoom in on any Pelitrack path and you will find lakes, reservoirs and rivers. Certain places, like southeastern New Mexico and western Texas, are devoid of satellite points from Utah pelicans probably due to the fact that these areas have precious little water — evidently less than required to entice the water-loving birds to pass over.

As time passes, more stories appear. Pedro decided to spend his days in Mexico westward of his fellow Utah birds; he was the only backpacked bird to settle on the peninsula of Baja California. In 2016 Hector visited locations apparently unknown to other backpacked birds – he was the only Pelitrack bird to fly to Oregon. Ongoing analyses have revealed that pelicans like Iris and Sylvester have ridden thermals to 27,000 and 33,000 feet, respectively. At such dizzying heights, the temperature hovers at -30 degrees and the air is lethally thin, placing American white pelicans into a small fraternity of fantastically hardy birds capable of surviving those conditions. Only the future knows what other secrets the transmitters will whisper to us in the form of satellite data.

Sam Hall, a DWR Senior GIS Analyst, custom-built the Pelitrack website for Utah’s pelicans but it has proven so useful that the code is currently being used by five other research projects to study California condors (The Peregrine Fund), golden eagles (US Fish and Wildlife Service), long-billed curlews (Intermountain Bird Observatory), short-eared owls (Hawkwatch International) and burrowing owls (University of Idaho). The reception to Pelitrack has been positive and we believe that the satellite-to-website model will continue to bring enlightenment and entertainment to birders young and old.

See the pelicans’ fall migration below (image courtesy Sam Hall/Utah DWR).